Part One: Citizen engagement in open science: what is there for language education?
Open Science, understood as a movement aiming to make scientific research (including publications, data, physical samples, and software) transparent and accessible to all, is gaining traction on the international level. In Europe, open science corresponds to the aim of “transforming science through ICT tools, networks and media, to make research more open, global, collaborative, creative and closer to society” (European Union, 2016).
One of the dimensions of Open Science is citizen science, corresponding to the contribution of volunteers in scholar work. Thus, the research process can be efficiently distributed among a large number of volunteers who contribute to the discovery process through particular research-related tasks, ranging from data gathering to the interpretation and annotation of datasets.
This presentation discusses citizen science from the perspective of languages: language use and language learning/teaching. By discussing achievements of citizen science in other sectors and by offering concrete examples in the language sector, this presentation will shed light to the potential of crowdsourced public participation for languages.
Part Two: A critical review of social networks for language learning beyond the classroom
Computer‐assisted language learning (CALL) scholars have become increasingly interested in social media for language education, be it for the appeal of these technologies to specific groups of learners, or for the sense of intellectual curiosity regarding the pedagogical affordances of artifacts not explicitly designed for learning. Independently of the motive to inquire into the field, it is undeniable that social media have been generating enthusiasm, skepticism, expectations, and even illusions since 2004, when the term Web 2.0 was coined by Tim O’Reilly and his colleagues (Musser et al. 2007).
The scope of this presentation is twofold. First, it offers a state‐of‐the art review of current scholarship pertaining to social media in language education and draws parallels with other digitally enhanced language‐learning fields, such as mobile assisted language learning (MALL) and game‐based learning (GBL) and situates them within second language (L2) research themes on agency and openness. Second, it conveys an exploratory view on future possibilities and promising directions that merit further investigation, such as open/citizen science and crowd learning for their potential in CALL.
